"We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive." — C.S. Lewis

Democrat Jon Ossoff dismissed concerns Tuesday over the fact that he doesn’t live in the Georgia congressional district in which he’s running for a House seat.

“I grew up in this district; I grew up in this community — it’s my home. My family is still there,” Ossoff said during an interview on CNN’s “New Day.”

If having family in a district is enough to be a candidate, most people would have plenty of options to run. That’s not how it works, though. And no, I don’t care that he’s “10 minutes up the road,” and just living there to “support his girlfriend in medical school.”

Either a rule is enforced, or it’s not a rule. This is yet another example of how we are no longer a nation of laws. And that’s not going to end well for anybody, no matter what short-term advantages someone thinks they see.

Life’s been busy lately, so posting has been light. For some time, though, I’ve been working on a list of “things I’d do if I was completely in charge of adjusting the government.” They center around limiting the influence of lobbyists, making immigration offenses a serious matter, and reducing the ability of a president to unilaterally commit the nation to war.

It’s an ongoing project. But I’ll post it here for any comments and input on what’s already there. Warning: it’s a lot of stuff (roughly 6 pages in a word processor). But then, there’s a lot of stuff wrong with the country, so that’s to be expected. Use the page numbers at the bottom of the post to advance to the next page.

Constructive input/critiques welcomed.

REFORM (Federal Level)

General:

No person convicted of a felony will be eligible to hold elective office at the Federal Level. Convicted felons may not serve in the Federal Civil Service above the grade of GS-5.

The Legislatures of each State will appoint one person to serve on a Federal Civil Service Oversight Board. Board members will serve terms determined by their individual State. This 50-member board will have power independent of Congress to investigate accusations of fraud, waste, abuse, or employee misconduct/failure to meet standards within the Federal workforce. The board, by a 3/5 majority vote, may dismiss any federal employee below the grade of Cabinet Secretary. The board will also investigate charges of retaliation against whistle-blowers. With the concurrence of 3/5 of the board, anyone deemed as having engaged in retaliation will be dismissed from Civil Service. No person dismissed by the Oversight Board will be eligible for any future Civil Service position or for elected office to Congress or the Presidency.

…then all bear close watching when given authority. I say this because I see in some Trump supporters the same “man-on-a-white-horse” aspirations as Obama’s believers in the “Lightbringer” showed eight years ago.

That’s not to say there isn’t reason for optimism. There have been some interesting aspects to this transition period, and it’s entirely possible Trump may meet or exceed some of the expectations people have for him to disrupt what has clearly become a government run by globalists with little concern for their own constituents.

But to be successful in the change many Americans voted for, they must make sure we don’t trade the cult of Obama for the cult of Trump. In some respects, they are mirror images of each other. Both have serious character flaws. Both promised a lot of things in their campaigns. Obama delivered on the “transformation” he promised, but many people now realize the changes were not in a positive direction. We’ve yet to see how successful Trump will be in undoing his predecessor’s damage.

The bottom line, however, is this: a healthy republic does not run on the whims of any single person. It requires the constant engagement of the citizenry… which is why it’s so hard to maintain. As the quip goes: “most people don’t really want to be free… they just hope for a good master who takes care of them.”

The idea that a large, complex society enjoying English liberty could long endure without the guiding hand of a priest-king was, in 1776, radical. A few decades later, it became ordinary — Americans could not imagine living any other way. …

As American society grows less literate and the state of its moral education declines, the American people grow less able to engage their government as intellectually and morally prepared citizens. We are in the process — late in the process, I’m afraid — of reverting from citizens to subjects. Subjects are led by their emotions, mainly terror and greed…

For more than two centuries, we Americans have been working to make government subject to us rather than the other way around, to make it our instrument rather than our master. But that requires a republican culture, which is necessarily a culture of responsibility. Citizenship, which means a great deal more than showing up at the polls every two years to pull a lever for Team R or Team D, is exhausting. On the other hand, monarchy is amusing, a splendid spectacle and a wonderful form of public theater.

But the price of admission is submission.

We’ll know we’re succeeding in returning to the Founders’ vision of a limited federal government when it doesn’t matter as much who occupies the White House or Congress. For now, though, the Executive has become quite monarchical (“I have a pen and a phone” sounds a lot like something George III would have said, had he access to either). Congress, meanwhile, dutifully plays the roles of courtiers, many of whom have aspirations of eventually occupying the Cherry Blossom Throne themselves (HT: Vox).

I sincerely hope our people didn’t go through two centuries of hard work fighting for, debating, pushing, shoving and reforming representative government just so it could devolve back into an authoritarian regime. Expect and hope for improvement under Trump, yes. But let’s also redevelop that culture of responsibility that recognizes “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”

That goes no matter whether Team Elephant or Team Donkey is at the levers of power. Remember that, in the end, “power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” The more powerful Uncle Sam has grown, the more corrupt his institutions.

I’ve noted before that we have greatly cheapened the value of U.S. citizenship. If anyone from anywhere can sneak into our country with a reasonable expectation that if they “hide in the shadows” long enough for another amnesty, then our birthright citizenship means nothing — or nada, if you must. That should be completely unacceptable to any citizen already here.

One particular aspect of that citizenship that is clearly neglected is our voting process. There should be absolutely no opposition to requiring photo I.D. to cast a vote — but the soft bigotry of low expectations (plus a desire for a fraud-conducive system) in the Democratic Party keeps claiming there’s no need, and that it’s an undue burden on minorities.

Voting machines in more than one-third of all Detroit precincts registered more votes than they should have during last month’s presidential election, according to Wayne County records prepared at the request of The Detroit News…

“There’s always going to be small problems to some degree, but we didn’t expect the degree of problem we saw in Detroit. This isn’t normal,” said Krista Haroutunian, chairwoman of the Wayne County Board of Canvassers… (emphasis added)

Republican state senators last week called for an investigation in Wayne County, including one precinct where a Detroit ballot box contained only 50 of the 306 ballots listed in a poll book, according to an observer for Trump.

Detroit has not had a Republican mayor since 1962. It’s safe to say there’s a well-oiled Democratic political machine in that city now, and that the Democrats have run everything as Detroit went from being a high-flying manufacturing center to a broken shell of its former self. As for the comment above “this isn’t normal,” I’d say it applies more to getting caught than to having such irregularities. What’s amusing is that this came to light because Jill Stein and her Green Party demanded a recountthat spent a boatload of money in Michigan and Wisconsin only to find Trump had 131 more votes in Wisconsin than originally recorded on election day.

Everything today revolves around convenience, which is why the arguments against voter I.D. have traction. Simply put, a lot of people don’t care if a lot of their neighbors are too lazy to take the few required steps to participate in what should be a secure voting process. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: in order to vote, you should have to pass a basic civics exam on how the Constitution sets up our government, you should have to have photo I.D. to vote, and your finger should be dipped in a Red, White or Blue ink (your choice) that doesn’t wash/rub out for a couple days. (I also believe that if you’re on public assistance, your voting rights should be temporarily suspended. Make sure you can take care of yourself before you start impacting others.)

I was in Iraq when they held their first post-Saddam election. From what I saw, they took their process and its security much more seriously than we do. That should shame us into action. Iraqis went to polling stations even with the threat of terrorist activity across the country (something that, thankfully, we only know a little about… for now). And we can’t be bothered to get an I.D.? Give me a break.

“What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.”

— Thomas Paine, from “The American Crisis,” written when protecting freedom (during the American Revolution) was a lot more inconvenient than it is today.

Many people voted for Trump reluctantly and with a tinge of regret. What (the Left is) doing right now simply confirms they made the right choice.

Forget “Red States vs. Blue States,” or “rural vs. urban.” The greatest divide in America today is “adults vs. juvenile delinquents.” When you have colleges(!!) offering pet therapy and Play-Doh to calm the fragile snowflakes traumatized by the election of Donald Trump, that’s a clue why there’s a large swath of the population that simply doesn’t know what to do with defeat. So they act out, as any two-year-old would.

This isn’t limited to college kids, either. Lots of employees at the Environment Protection Agency are so distraught they’re taking sick days. They don’t seem to understand that doing so reinforces the impression taxpayers already have of most of the bloated Federal bureaucracy — an impression that caused them to look for an outsider to shake things up.

They’re shaking, all right. And Trump has yet to do anything.

Somebody needs to inform these infantile idiots that large crowds engaging in smashing random cars, lobbing Molotov cocktails and generally tearing their own city down around them tend to make enemies real fast.

And that was one city. Right now, literal anarchists are spreading their temper tantrum to as many cities as possible. If this keeps up, sooner or later they’re going to meet armed resistance. Since the police departments seem tamed by the threat of being called nasty names, that resistance is increasingly likely to come from prepared citizens who aren’t afraid to defend their “life, liberty and property.”

That’s what this election tells us about what’s left of the ‘United’ States. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks so, either:

“Voting for an out of control egomaniac like Donald Trump would be like playing Russian roulette with the future of this country. Voting for someone with a track record like Hillary Clinton’s is like putting a shotgun to your head and pulling the trigger.” – Thomas Sowell

Millions of Americans are waking up to the fact the system is rigged to give the appearance of the Republic we once had, while functioning in reality as an oligarchy. There are two sets of laws — one for the little people (even the not-so-little) and one for the self-appointed mandarin class.

If the ruling class can’t be bothered to even maintain an illusion of representing the average person, then why should those average Americans respect–or obey–the rotten system? At least one former Army colonel is now convinced the system is too far gone to retain our loyalty:

We owe the system nothing. Nada. Zip. Instead, the system owes us fairness and honesty, and without them it has no right to our default acceptance of its results. That acceptance must be earned. This means that the system must aggressively police its own integrity, and this year it has utterly failed to do so…

Is this dangerous talk? Hell yes – but the danger doesn’t come from us pointing out the corruption. The danger is the corruption. I walked through wrecked villages in the aftermath of a civil war, so I sure as hell don’t need your lessons about what lies at the bottom of the slippery slope your ruling class is tobogganing down.

I could say the same: I deployed half a dozen times during my time in uniform. I know a little of what war looks like, too, and that’s why I often tell people who seem a little too eager for war to become how we settle our differences here that they don’t know what they’re saying.

That doesn’t mean I’m not also wondering how much longer the charade will last. The Declaration of Independence seems relevant here:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Pray that we don’t have to travel that road again. But prepare for the journey, just in case.